


i don't love you (and i always will)

by griffenly



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griffenly/pseuds/griffenly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We're sharing a bed, and ask me if pigeons have feelings again, I dare you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't love you (and i always will)

**Author's Note:**

> This got angsty as hell so I have nothing but apologies.

The day she came home, he was out hunting. 

When Bellamy reentered the camp, a deer being carried between the six people behind him, it was Raven who found him first. She was practically sprinting towards him, and he was momentarily impressed by her improvement with her new brace, before she was directly in front of him, wild-eyed and out of breath, and she whispered the words she’s back. (He felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest, as if to remind him that the salve to mend its fractured pieces had returned, that he wasn’t alone anymore.)

Miller seemed to notice the change in Bellamy’s demeanor - stiff shoulders, mouth slightly agape, hands shaking just slightly in fists clenched by his sides - because he signaled to the other hunters to move in, giving Bellamy a nod before following them. 

“She’s asleep,” Raven said gently, with a smirk that was far, far too knowing for Bellamy’s liking, “if you want to go see her now, before she wakes up.” 

He cleared his throat and ducked his head, running a hand along the back of his neck. And then he moved around Raven, retorting, “Shut up, Reyes,” to her admonishing sigh (he was weak weak weak, and he fucking knew it). Pointedly ignoring the calls of the people he passed, he made his way directly to the med bay. He stopped cold at the sight of Abby double-checking her daughter’s injuries, but she merely smiled softly at him when he walked in.

“She shouldn’t be up for a few more hours, at least,” Abby said quietly, and god damn it why did every woman in this camp know him so fucking well. Bellamy inclined his head in acknowledgment, and Abby slipped out, so it was just he and Clarke. 

Clarke. 

His fingers itched to touch her, to ghost across her skin (skin the color of porcelain but the strength of steel). His feet moved of their own accord, by her side in an instant, his eyes taking in every inch of her, rememorizing her - there were freckles dusting her nose now, and there was the faint remnants of a sunburn. She was a bit more gaunt than he remembered, but her face looked placid, happy. There was a new scar at the edge of her jaw, which he traced lightly with the tips of his fingers. 

She stirred at the contact, and he tore his hand away in an instant, barely breathing for fear of waking her up. But she merely hummed a bit before nuzzling further into the pillow (into the spot where Bellamy’s hand had been mere moments ago). 

Nevertheless, he fled from the room just seconds later. (He was weak.)

They held a party for her, that night.

Clarke hadn’t woken up until well after the sun set, and that was when Monty had declared that a celebration was in order, handing out moonshine like it was medicine, so Bellamy had been successfully avoiding her for the better part of the night.

And he didn’t want to be avoiding her, not really, it was just - 

She had been gone, and in that time, he had had far too much space to think about her and him and them and - and Clarke was the sun. She was all fire and flame and brightness, eternal beauty, lighting up everything and making it better. Except… except he had inadvertently placed his heart into her fragile, trembling hands, and she had scorched it to the core. She had burned him alive, and he hadn’t even realized.

Until she had left.

But now… now she was back, and he was thrilled, truly - but his heart had spent the better part of five months trying to repair the damage, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to hand it over to her, again, yet. 

(It was never a question of if, but rather when. He was weak.)

Bellamy watched her the whole night, because even if he was trying to avoid direct contact, his eyes gravitated towards her naturally, like the tide to the shore, always coming back no matter how hard he tried to resist. He watched the way she threw her head back in laughter, and it brought a tentative smile to his lips, because - when was the last time she had been that carefree? Unity Day, maybe? But even then, Spacewalker had fucked that up in about ten minutes.

And he saw the way Raven was looking at her as they sat around the fire, with relief and gratitude and happiness, because Raven had missed her about as much as he had. And Monty was hanging on her every word, and Miller even granted her the slightest tilt of his lips, which was practically a miracle. Even Octavia went over to her, at one point, and though there was tension in her shoulders, there was also a small smile on her lips when Clarke pulled her into a hug. 

Bellamy looked away from her long enough to go and refill his cup, because he was going to need a lot more alcohol to get himself through tonight. 

But just as he turned away from the literal barrel of moonshine to return to his position hiding out beneath one of the trees, he ran directly into her, because he was the tide and she was the shore, after all.

Clarke was drunk off her ass, that much was certain, because she was giving him a giddy smile and her balance was at about the same level as a toddler, but she was fucking giggling, and that was way too much of a distraction for Bellamy to even realize he was clutching at her forearms and her hands were gripping his elbows. 

“You’re avoiding me,” Clarke said around a hiccup, and she attempted to make a firm expression, but it was so weak it made him laugh. (When was the last time that had happened, either?) 

“And you are wasted,” he retorted calmly. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

“Glad to see you haven’t changed,” she muttered, but she let him wrap an arm around her shoulder to guide her and she leaned heavily into his body, her right arm circling his waist, and it made him smile, a bit. 

(He gave Raven a very, very menacing glare when she raised her eyebrows at him, and she laughed in response. Bitch.)

Bellamy led her into a cabin, carefully depositing her on the bed and starting to take off her shoes when she asked, her words slurred, “Whose place is this?” 

Instead, he heard, you believed I was coming home. 

“Yours.” Of course I did. 

Bellamy felt her stiffen beneath him, but he pretended not to notice, lining her shoes by the end of the bed and attempting to wrangle her beneath the sheets. Once she was situated, he nodded his head once and began to leave, but her voice (and her hand, darting out to encircle his wrist) stopped him. “Bellamy?” she asked softly, and fucking hell, he was so far gone. “Will… will you stay with me, a minute?” 

He hesitated, but he looked into her eyes (her blue, blue eyes, the color of the ocean in all those history books, the color of the radiant butterflies Octavia had once loved), and he saw the nervousness and the plea, and so he nodded and gestured for her to move over. 

He slid on top of the sheets beside her, and he could feel her staring at him as she lay on her side, and around a hiccup she whispered, “Do you think pigeons have feelings?”

Bellamy snorted. “Christ, you’re so wasted.” 

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Yeah, I think pigeons probably have feelings. Now go the fuck to sleep.”

“Always so cheery,” she mumbled, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Clarke was quiet for a few minutes, but her brain was so fucking loud when she was thinking this hard, and it had to work overtime given her intoxication, so he sighed and turned so he was facing her.

“I can hear you thinking,” he told her, raising an eyebrow. Clarke bit her lip, and fuck, he needed to get himself under control. (She’d already been back one day, and she was already in his bloodstream, infecting his body and filling his veins with clarkeclarkeclarke.) 

“You were avoiding me, you know,” she whispered finally, and there it is. 

“No, I wasn’t,” he said on a sigh, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t patronize me.” Her voice was surprisingly firm, and her eyes were searching his face, trying to read him like she had so many times before. (He was an open book in her small hands.) “Why were you avoiding me?” 

Bellamy sighed and closed his eyes for a brief moment. He wondered if she knew how she looked, right now, the moonlight filtering over her face through the window, coloring her in shades of light and dark, her eyes so blue and bright and hair the color of the sunlight she had swallowed into her fingertips. 

“Because… because it was hard when you left, and I…” He paused, tried to find the right words. “I didn’t want me to be another burden to carry, once you got back. I wanted to make sure I could shoulder the rest of what you couldn’t.” 

Clarke stared at him, and he wanted to tell her so much more. He wanted to tell her about all of the fights he and Octavia had had about her. He wanted to tell her that at night, he used to sit outside the gate with a bottle of moonshine and tell her about the day. He wanted to tell her that she haunted his dreams with the ghost of her lips on his cheek, with almosts and what-could-have-beens. He wanted to tell her that he would be Atlas, that he would slip the weight from her fragile, shaking shoulders and take it instead, always. 

He wanted to tell her that he had meant it, what he had said in a desperate plea to make her stay. That together and what we did and we can get through this were his way of saving I love you, and that he had been counting down the days until she had made good on her vow to meet him again. 

But she had just gotten home, and her eyes were clearer than they had been on that day so many months ago, and she was drunk, and those were not the words she needed. They may have been right, just not right now. 

So on that night, when Clarke had finally nodded, accepting his answer, curling herself into him and mumbling a thank you into his shirt, Bellamy merely handed over his heart to her once again and prayed he could withstand the flames.

(He was the tide, and she was the shore, and he would always find his way back to her.)


End file.
